This invention relates to a molded clip of conventionally shaped nails that is suitable for use in an automatic nail gun.
An automatic nail gun generally has a feeder that is arranged to deliver nails in sequence from a magazine into a gun chamber. The nails, as received in the chamber are struck by a hammer and driven into a receiving member against which the gun barrel is seated. Nails used in automatic guns are generally formed of metal and are oftentimes held in spaced apart alignment by flexible bands made of plastic or paper. The banded nails are supplied in roll form and the user cuts strips of suitable length to fit the gun machine from the supply roll. The bands, however, are relatively weak making the handling and loading of the strips difficult. Nail losses can also occur by unwanted breakage of the bands or by the nails becoming dislodged from the bands.
Efforts have been made to eliminate some of these problems by molding nails of plastic wherein the plastic nails are held together by integrally molded webs in a clip. Examples of some of these clips are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,492,907, 3,348,669, and 3,165,968. The shape of the nails used in these molded clips are all rather non conventional and require special guns for their utilization. It should be further noted that the plastic nails must be molded from high strength plastic so that they can be driven into various receiving materials. The webs that join the nails in the clip are molded from the same high strength material as the nails. As a consequence, the nails are difficult to separate from the clip as they are being driven from the gun chamber. If the nails do not separate cleanly, the gun will become jammed and/or the nail will be improperly driven into the receiving material. Web material that is left behind in the gun can also disrupt the feeding of nails into the chamber.
Mujaoku, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,915,299 describes a multi-step process for connecting plastic nails in a clip. The nails are molded in half sections so that when the sections are joined together, the shank portion of each nail has a pair of laterally extended holes. The nails are then mounted upon support rods that are passed through the holes. The rods have a lower shearing modulus than the nails whereby the nails are easily separated from the clip during the driving operation. Because of the number of operations required to manufacture this type of clip, the cost of the clips are relatively high. Additionally, placing holes in the nail shank seriously weakens the nail and thus limits the number of nailing applications that can be performed.